In Progress

Sunday, July 2, 2017

In their simplest incarnations—a line for an I, a circle for
an O—letterforms reveal their true nature: they are forms first, letters
second. The connective tissue that transforms a circle into a letterform is
only as strong as the imagination and consensus of the community for whom that
circle represents the letter O. For some communities the O is a rectangle, for
others it is a lozenge balanced between parallel horizontal lines. To tell
either of these communities that their Os are not Os is as futile as telling a
speaker of one language that he ought to be speaking another. These variable
permutations of abstraction and legibility are the source of the alphabet’s
dynamism, and it is in the boundary between these two states that I enjoy
spending my time.

Roma
Abstract is based closely on a geometric alphabet I painted while at
the American Academy in Rome. When I first arrived for my fellowship in Rome, I
did so with a high level of anxiety. I felt an intense pressure to produce
work, and from my first day at the Academy I could feel the time slipping away.
In an attempt to calm myself, I painted a seven-inch diameter circle on a
wooden panel. As people visited my studio they would unfailingly remark on the
“O” on my wall. Each time I would tell them that it was not an O but a circle,
and each time they responded that they had assumed that it was a letterform
because I had drawn it. I had become the O’s contextual source of legibility,
it was through me that the circle became an O. By the fourth or fifth such
conversation, I began saying that the circle was an O, and proceeded to paint
the remaining twenty-five letterforms in the alphabet.

The west wall of my Rome studio with the circle/O to the left on the wall.

The east wall with many of the original Roma Abstract paintings along the floor.

The finished alphabet borrows from Greek, Etruscan, and
Roman alphabetical marks to create a set of twenty-six forms that require their
neighbors to be understood. They are legible, but only just so. As a group, the
letterforms also evoke the diversity of alphabetical history, calling into
question the recurring desire to find an idealized alphabetical form.

After returning to New York in 2010, I digitally traced the
letterforms and used them at greatly reduced size on my MMXI
new year’s card and on a page of Specimens
of Diverse Characters. Although I liked the smaller printed
versions, something was missing. The original scale of the painted letters was
critical to their reading as monumental forms that had been degraded and
deprived of their full meaning. Since printing Specimens I have wanted to print the
letterforms of Roma
Abstract at their original size.

The problem I faced was that I did not simply want to make
a facsimile of the painted alphabet, and I could not find a compelling exterior
reason to print the book. So I put the idea aside and waited. Then increasingly
over the last two years I have come to feel that every aspirational symbol of
culture and civility has been abstracted into unrecognizable ciphers; and any
stable understanding I thought I had of a Roman ideal has been shattered by the
steady onslaught of global social and political upheavals. My illegible
alphabet suddenly makes sense, has gained in legibility within the current
political context. What grew out of a desire to challenge the Roman ideal
suddenly changed into a lament of its passing.

The title page reading Roma Abstract/An Alphabet By/Russell Maret

In contrast to the original alphabet in which each
letterform was painted on its own wooden panel, the letterforms in Roma Abstract
are printed on translucent paper to emphasize their communal aspect—rather than
standing alone, each letter is supported and explicated by those around it. The
book’s cover is printed with the text from the inscription on Trajan’s column,
the letterforms of which are widely regarded as the apotheosis of Roman
alphabetical form. Set in the letterforms of Roma Abstract, this Trajanic benchmark of
enlightened Imperial form is rendered nearly illegible, echoing the absurd
mockery of statehood in which we find ourselves living.

Detail of the cover with the text from the inscription on Trajan's column set in Roma Abstract.

Detail of the cover and slipcase.

Opening showing the U and the V.

The printed sheets laid out for collation in my studio, with Nancy Loeber collating below.

Tuesday, February 14, 2017

Over the course of a couple of years, Tim Barrett and I have
engaged in a conversation about the role of gelatin sizing in papermaking and
printing. The central issue we discussed was this: sizing has a negative impact
on print quality but a beneficial impact on the endurance and aesthetics of
handmade paper. Tim’s research into pre-Industrial European papermaking
processes has suggested that some, and perhaps many, post-15th century books
were printed on waterleaf (unsized) paper to which the books’ printers, or
someone else, added sizing after printing. For those of us who use expensive
handmade paper to make even more expensive books, the thought of dipping our
printed sheets into a vat of liquid gelatin is fraught with morbid
possibilities. Despite this, after our initial conversation I sent Tim some
sheets printed on waterleaf paper so that he could re-size them. The results
were intriguing but not entirely persuasive. Although the increased durability
that sizing can lend to paper is appealing, the books that I make are used in
ways that are not comparable with those in which a 16th century book was used.
A contemporary press book that is printed on soft, unsized cotton paper, housed
in a box, and stored inside a temperature-controlled library will bear its age
well. If the same paper had been used to print pocketbooks for traveling
Humanists, the books would not have withstood the demands of their owners.

The repeated physical use to which many early printed books
were subjected lent them a patina similar to that of well-used tools, full of
shine and scuff. In addition to the frequency of opening or the method of
storing their books, early modern bibliophiles differentiated themselves in one
important way from their 21st century avatars: they wrote in their books. They
wrote in the margins, between the lines, in the voids of woodcuts, on fly
leaves and paste downs. They parsed, debated, excised, and amended their texts
in ways that are unthinkable to contemporary private press printers, but that
were certainly expected by the printers of the day. If the paper in their books
had not been sized, the ink of their pens would have bled into the paper fibers
rather than holding a crisp line. The expectation of marginalia was another
determining factor in the sizing of book paper after printing. Just as it is
today, use was the arbiter of process.

One might reasonably ask then: If my books do not require
the durable benefits of gelatin sizing, why would I deal with sizing at all,
particularly with the risky proposition of adding sizing to printed sheets? But
ultimately my interests in paper sizing are not utilitarian, they are
aesthetic. My favorite sheets of handmade paper are crisp, like freshly ironed
linen, and turning them in a book is a complex sensory experience. The papers
quiver with a gentle rattle as they are turned, making it hard to resist
drumming one’s fingertips against them. When bent they make a snapping sound,
when shuffled they whisper like rustling leaves. These qualities are the
accidental aesthetic benefits of gelatin sizing, and they are the qualities
that I most want to have in the papers that I use for my books.

With many of these issues in mind, Tim Barrett and his
students at the University of Iowa Center for the Book have been trying to
recreate the working conditions of a pre-Industrial papermill, employing a
three person team to make 100-200 sheets of handmade paper per hour. The paper
they are making is not meant to be perfect or precious but well-made and
serviceable, to invite contact and annotation. With this paper, Tim and his
colleagues are attempting an intriguing sleight of hand, engaging an historical
process in the hope that it will
arbitrate contemporary use. The
problem, of course, is that once a craftsperson puts something out into the
world, he/she cannot control how that object is used. It’s all well and good to
want people to use paper in a certain way, it’s another matter altogether to
get them to actually do it. Handmade paper, however quickly made, instills a
certain amount of fear in bibliophiles, and the speed with which it is made
does not alter a paper’s perceived preciousness.

In thinking about how to get people to use Tim’s paper more
aggressively, it occurred to me that I would have to make a book whose content
would tilt the scales; a book whose text would encourage people to remove it
from the shelf and bring it into the messy world of their daily lives. No book
satisfied this requirement better than a cookbook. In the hope of finding
people who would be willing to put a fine book through the paces, I invited a
group of printers, binders, and librarians to submit one or two recipes each
for a small cookbook called Hungry
Bibliophiles. In turn, each participant agreed to cook as many of the
recipes as they can within the space of a year, to cook them with the book open
on their countertop, and to take notes in ink on the pages. The book would be
printed on waterleaf paper that would be gelatin sized after printing, and
bound in a historically inspired paper binding designed by Maria Fredericks.

Maria Fredericks' copy of Hungry Bibliophiles

Every aspect of Hungry
Bibliophiles was conceived in the spirit of Tim’s work in the papermill,
primarily his experiments with speed. Tim, Maria, and I each respond viscerally
to the imperfections that are the byproducts of pre-Industrial speed—those of a
practiced hand working quickly, as opposed to a machine working efficiently—and
Hungry Bibliophiles gave us a chance
to explore them in practice. Following Tim’s lead, I designed a revival of a
seventeenth century Dutch typeface for the text in two days. I allowed myself
one drawing and one revision per letterform, aligned the letters by eye, and
set each on a fixed width, in the hope of tapping in to the spirited
irregularity of my model typeface. I then printed the book in twelve days,
shipped any finished sheets to Tim for sizing at the end of each week, and
drove the final batch out to Iowa City so that I could participate in the
sizing and transport the sized sheets back to New York for binding.

Sandra and Harry Reese's copy of Hungry Bibliophiles

In keeping with the speed experiment, Maria Fredericks set a
goal of binding all seventy-five books in the edition in two days. To
accomplish this we assembled a crew of eight variously experienced binders and
set aside a weekend for our experiment. (The crew consisted of Maria
Fredericks, Anne Hillam, Vasaré Rastonis, Yukari Hayashida, Annie Schlechter,
Nancy Loeber, Gaylord Schanilec, and me.) Maria designed a long stitch paper
binding structure made entirely from UICB papers, and lead the production;
Annie made sandwiches to fuel the workers; and by Sunday afternoon the eight of
us had bound seventy-nine copies of the book. The books were distributed to the
participants for cooking and annotating, and now the used books have been photographed
by 42-Line to make this facsimile.Copies are available for purchase at russellmaret.com.

Saturday, February 4, 2017

Letterforms are contingent on the technology by which they
are created. Lettering technologies sort themselves into four basic categories—calligraphic, epigraphic, typographic,
and digigraphic—and can be simplified
for our purposes thus: letterforms that are drawn directly onto a surface using
a hand-held tool are calligraphic;
those that are incised directly into a surface, epigraphic; those that are cast from a matrix, or mechanically
engraved, onto a body of fixed height and depth but flexible width, typographic; and those that are
digitally outlined around pixelated clusters, digigraphic. Identifying a letterform’s generative technology gives
us insight into the fact that although one variety of letterform may be made to
look like another variety, it cannot
be made to act like another without,
at best, suffering significant loss. For instance, the printed form of a
typographic letter may look calligraphic, but typography itself cannot accurately
replicate the action of calligraphy. In incunable periods of new technologies,
these distinctions take on a deeper relevance as the nascent technology
attempts to differentiate itself from other available technologies. This is the
period we find ourselves in today with digital letter design.

Although it is generally assumed that contiguous
technologies build upon one another, the relationship between them is often
quite limited. Fifteenth century book hands provided the initial models for
typographic lettering, for instance, but beyond outward appearance there is no
meaningful technological connection between the models and their successors. Similarly,
typographic lettering (ie. type) has provided the organizing principle for
digigraphic lettering, but that is where the relationship ends. Typographic and
digigraphic letterforms are subject to different technological limitations, and
there is no reason for one to strictly imitate the other. Instead, the goal
ought to be to identify and explore the specific technological limitations of
digigraphic lettering. This will be achieved by pushing limits.

If we accept the division of letterforms into four general
technological categories, then we must also acknowledge that typographic
lettering is ontologically distinct from the other three. Every lettering
technology has practical restraints, but typographic letterforms are the only
ones that are restrained not only in the moment of their creation but in their
succeeding existence. They remain subject to the demands of their physical
quadratic bodies post partum, in eterno.
By contrast, digigraphic lettering, like calligraphic and most epigraphic
lettering, is unencumbered by the quadratic grid. (These letterforms may be
willingly subjected to a quadratic system, but it is an aesthetic choice, not a
technological necessity.) The ontological differences between typographic and
other kinds of letterforms suggest that we might find more meaningful lessons
for digigraphic lettering by looking to calligraphic and epigraphic models than
we will by aping typographic ones.

Lettering technologies embody incumbent practical and
aesthetic presumptions that appear universal when they are in fact
technologically specific. The gravitational pull of these presumptions long
outlasts the transition from one technology to another. An obvious example is
the Industrial Age proposition that a single typeface, or a grouping of closely
sympathetic designs, is sufficient for the conveyance of complex textual information.
In the pre-typographic era it was taken for granted that different kinds of
information would be presented in different lettering styles. Early typography
imitated this variety in the convention of setting ecclesiastical texts in
black letter and secular ones in roman types, in the use of structurally
diverse typefaces (often determined by no other means than availability), and
in the generational re-interpretation of historical styles. This variety
quickly became impractical within the framework of Industrial typographic technology,
giving rise to aesthetic presumptions that validated the technology. Such
presumptions may have made sense within the framework of their native
technologies, but the technological limitations from which they arose no longer
exist.

Wednesday, January 11, 2017

I met the poet Eliza Griswold in 2009 while we were both fellows at
the American Academy in Rome. Early on in our time there, we visited the
tomb of the baker Eurysacis, a strikingly modern structure built in 30
BCE just outside the Porta Maggiore. It was a beautiful autumn
morning—Annie was taking pictures of the tomb, the archaeologist Suzanna
McFadden was reading about it from the Blue Guide. While I ogled the
tomb's late Republican inscription, Eliza took out her notebook and
wrote a poem about Eurysacis. Shortly afterward I designed a typeface
based on the inscription.

A detail of the tomb of Eurysacis and his wife.

The
following year we all moved back to New York, and for years afterward
Eliza and I had a semi-annual conversation about a book that we would
someday make together. Her original poem was thrown out, we both pursued
other books. Then a couple of years ago, Eliza completed a sizable
poetry manuscript, Ovid on Climate Change. I had begun working
with Ed Rayher at Swamp Press to make a metal version of my Baker
typeface, and the time seemed right to actually make our book.
Eliza wrote a new poem about Eurysacis, I found a large cache of Adrian
Frutiger's Meridien typeface for the text, and we set to work choosing a
selection of the poems for a small edition. (Read 'Poetry Magazine''s interview with Eliza about the poems.)

The Baker typeface.

In
thinking of a visual component of the book, it was important to me that
I not illustrate the poems. In general, I am timid about appending
imagery to living people's words, but these poems in particular cover a
diverse array of physical and emotional landscapes—one poem calls out
for one kind of imagery, another wants something else entirely.
Nevertheless, it was important for me to alter the page in some way, to
visually link the poems without interfering with them. The solution I
came up with was a modulating ground of sprayed acrylic paint running
through the book, a kind of desert landscape from which the poems rise.
Below are some process photos.

Wednesday, October 12, 2016

In 2011 Joe
Whitlock-Blundell asked me to design the binding for The Folio Society’s
edition of The
Sound and the Fury.
Joe had liked the patterned paper I designed for Specimens of Diverse
Characters
and he asked me to emulate it for the Faulkner. In response I designed nine
ornamental variations on a basic theme: a central pinwheel form with nine
different fillers among the pinwheel’s arms. Joe chose the busiest of the nine
designs as appropriate to the content of his book, and I spent a couple of
years thinking about what else to do with the remaining ornaments. Eventually I
decided to make a book of patterned papers, and I sent one of the designs, now
called Pinwheel Ornaments, to Ed Rayher to have it made into new metal type
ornaments.

While the type was being
made I began the obsessive process of designing ornamental patterns. I do most
of this kind of work while lying awake in bed, and this time was no different.
For months I worked out meticulous variations in the wee hours, unsure as to
whether I would model the book on a type specimen, printing the designs in
black ink on white paper, or on a fabric swatch book, printing the patterns in
colors on a variety of papers.

The more I thought about
these patterns the more I realized that my mind was wandering. I love making
patterns, but a book that only explored the patterning potential of the
ornaments was not holding my interest. Instead, I began envisioning elaborate
arrangements that were not inspired by what the ornaments could do but by what
they were not supposed to do. While reading or walking around the city, texts
and images would spark ideas for designs that made no practical sense at all,
and my thoughts would digress into designs of eight, or nine, or more colors.

The
book that has developed, Ornamental
Digressions,
draws on all of these various sources. It begins with four black and gray
designs that display the basic functions of the ornaments. This is followed by
fifteen ornamental
digressions,
each of which is paired with a text and printed in a wide array of colors. The
book ends with notes on the sources of the fifteen digressions. Additionally,
twenty copies are accompanied by a swatch book of twenty patterned papers that
are printed on variously colored handmade paper.

The first sample bindings have arrived from Craig Jensen at Book Lab II, and copies will begin shipping this week. Below are some photos of the book and the process of making it.

Spine of the deluxe (left) and standard boxes.

Title page.

Title page of Pinwheel Papers, the companion volume of patterned papers.

Some of the patterned papers accompanying the deluxe copies.

Celine Lombardi and Nancy Loeber tipping-in the patterned papers.

Color map and type formes for the Shakespeare page.

Close up of the image for Shakespeare's passage "...ornament is but the guilèd shore to a most dangerous sea."

Friday, June 3, 2016

Last summer I visited
Phil Abel and Nick Gill at Hand & Eye Letterpress in London. After lunch, Nick and I got to
talking about the feasibility of making a new typeface for Monotype composition
casting. Nick had been studying the finer points of typefounding at the Type
Archive in south London and he had been unable to locate one specific piece of
information that would make a new composition face possible: he could not find
detailed instructions for the creation of patterns for the pantographic
punchcutting machine used by Monotype. Unlike direct matrix engraving processes
in which a letter’s fit and alignment can be determined after the engraving,
the Monotype process requires each letter’s fit and alignment to be figured out
in advance. Those calculations are manifest in the pattern used to engrave
punches, and they are followed through to the punch, the matrix, and the final
piece of type. If the letterform is not in the right place on the pattern, in
other words, it will never be in the right place on the piece of type. The
trick is in figuring out the specific relationship between the pattern and the
resulting piece of type, and the literature on this relationship is lacking.
Intrigued, I lightheartedly suggested that we try to figure it out—Why not?—and Nick and I agreed
that he would discuss it with Duncan Avery at the Type Archive and get back to
me.

A few months later I was
back in London for a meeting at the Type Archive. In the time that had passed
since our discussion at Hand & Eye, Nick had assembled an impressive, multi-generational
group of collaborators to assess the feasibility of the project and, hopefully,
to figure out the missing pattern information. The assembled group included
Duncan Avery, who worked for Monotype from 1945 until 1992, at which point he
initiated the Type Museum; Graham Sheppard, whose tenure at Monotype spanned
1952–1995 and included work in the Type Drawing and Type Development Groups; Parminder
Kumar Rajput, who began at Monotype in 1965 and is now the only person
qualified to operate every machine used in the production of matrices; Doug
Ellis, who began as an apprentice at Monotype in 1955 before eventually
becoming foreman of the Monotype Toolroom in 1991; Thomas Mayo, a printer who
has been making a name for himself through his innovative use of laser cutting,
the technology he will use to cut the patterns for our type; and finally Nick
himself, a printer and typefounder who is the only person other than Kumar
Rajput qualified to cut punches and make matrices for Monotype Composition
Casters.

After a brief tour of
the Type Archive’s facility, we found ourselves in front of the punchcutting
machine where Nick and I were hoping to begin the long, arduous process of
discovering the missing pattern measurements. Kumar pointed out the various
parts and functions of the punchcutter for my benefit and then Nick posed the
thousand dollar question: How do we figure out the relationship between the
pattern and the piece of type? It is difficult in retrospect to capture the comedy of
the ensuing exchange, but imagine our surprise when, rather than getting a long
bibliography of hints and sources, Graham Sheppard chimed in from behind us
with a list of precise measurements from the top of his head. Sometimes all you need to do is ask the right
person the right question. In an instant the focal point of the day changed
from figuring out how to make a single piece of type to endeavoring to make a
complete typeface, Hungry
Dutch.

Since that meeting in
October there have been many fits and starts. Discussing the abstract idea of
type manufacture over lunch is quite different from actually manufacturing
type, and my learning curve has been long and steep. But nearly six months to
the day after our meeting at the Type Archive, Duncan Avery sent me a packet
containing newly made type, matrix, punch, and pattern, all derived from my
drawing of a letter H. The thrill of opening that packet is one that has no
equivalent in my experience—in my hand was evidence of something I had assumed
was utterly impossible.

The thought that we
might be able to manufacture new composition typefaces is almost too exciting
to bear but the excitement is tempered by the enormity of the undertaking. At
the current working schedule of the Type Archive, it is estimated that making Hungry Dutch would require nearly two
years. It is not, in all honesty, a project that is likely to be completed. But
completion is not always the most rewarding outcome of creative work. Instead,
the process of making the new type is
the aspect of the project that promises to bear the most enduring fruit. We are
at a jump or fall moment in the history of this technology. The four men
involved in the manufacture of the Hungry Dutch matrices—Duncan, Graham, Kumar, and
Doug—are the brain trust of the Monotype Corporation. The only way to fully
access the knowledge that they have acquired is by going through the process of
manufacture with them. The only way we can preserve that knowledge is by
documenting everything we can along the way.

I
propose to make this a communal endeavor. I will work with the Type Archive to
go as far as we can, and to collect as much information as we can. I will print
fun ephemera as we progress and, eventually, a book about the process. The
first step it to make the thirteen “medial trial letters”—a, C, e, f, g, H, h,
i, n, O, o, p, t—and proceed from there. What I am looking for are supporters
who are willing to sponsor the making of a letter or two (or more), at a cost
of $600 each. In exchange for your support you will receive a pattern, matrix,
and piece of type for each letter you sponsor*; copies of all ephemera printed
from the type; and a discount on the resulting book that I publish, in which
you will be listed as a patron. This project is conceived as a typographic
adventure, and, in the spirit of all real adventures, it is undertaken without
a clear idea of what will result. All that is required is people who are willing
to come along for the ride. If you would like to sponsor a letter, please
email, call, or visit the “Books in Print” section of my website and click on HungryDutch.

*An important part of this project is that we follow Monotype's in-house procedures as closely as possible. Those procedures necessitate the manufacture of what are called the thirteen "medial trial letters" before moving on to the full face. From these letters—a, C, e, f, g, H, h, i, n, O, o, p, t—the head of drawings, Graham Sheppard, and the head of punch cutting, Kumar Rajput, are able to glean the necessary information for production of the remaining letters. In the spirit of this project, I am reticent to promise sponsors that they will receive letters other than the initial thirteen. However, due to the response thus far it does seem certain that we will be able to go beyond them. So this is what I propose: choose your letter or letters from the thirteen medial letters: a, C, e, f, g, H, h, i, n, O, o, p, t. If you would prefer different letters, let me know and, if we get as far as making them, they will happily be yours.

Tuesday, May 24, 2016

In August 1848 Effie Gray arrived in Abbeville, France with her husband of four months, John Ruskin. While there, John scurried about measuring and drawing from dawn to dusk while Effie often found herself alone to take in the sights. It is easy to imagine that Effie's days in Abbeville were colored, if not dominated, by the shock and humiliation of their wedding night, and all the nights since, as it became clearer and clearer that something was seriously wrong with John. But whatever Effie's mental state during her time in Abbevile, she was particularly struck by the facade of the "the magnificent Cathedral of St. Wilfran," about which she wrote, "I was very much confounded with the mixture of the grand and the ridiculous in the whole scene..." Whether or not she was making an allusion to her marriage in this observation, and it is doubtful that she was, it is hard not to see some connection in retrospect. Being married to John Ruskin was nothing if not publicly grand and privately ridiculous.

In thinking about a design for Ornamental Digressions inspired by Effie's description of St. Wilfran, I wanted to make a design that would be part rose window, part carnival ride, and be printed in day-glo colors to raise the alarm: Warning! Get out while you can, Effie! I opted for a sixteen arm design because Why not?, and it would let me play with my extra-fancy angular lock-up furniture. The text was too long for a single line of type, so my first thought was to break it in two and place the design between the text.

The result was disappointing for two reasons: 1) the design appeared to be squished in a vice of the text and 2) the central section of the design felt unresolved. Each of the sixteen arms is composed of three spurs, and in the first proof the central spur of each arm is too short and the exterior spur too long. The central spur feels too far away from the center; the exterior spur too close to its neighbor.

Although the Pinwheel Ornament set includes 14 pieces, it clearly wasn't enough. The lovely concentric wave that was created by the longest spur of each arm was interrupted by the central and outer spurs being the wrong length. There was no option but to mortise some of the ornaments in half to correct the problem.

Here's the mortised type locked up in the forme.

Once printed, the central section felt much more cohesive. I also moved the design up on the page and brought both lines of text together at the bottom, separated by a day-glo orange Warning! rule.

Below is a close up of the print in sunlight to give a better idea of the colors, and a shot of one of the lock ups in my extra-fancy lock-up furniture.